(CPJ) Freedom Of Journalists Organization Attacks Poroshenko Regime Banning Journalists And Bloggers

The New York-based media freedom advocacy organization Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned a decree signed by Coup Leader Petro Poroshenko on banning 41 international journalists and bloggers from Ukraine for one year. The reporters and bloggers were among 388 people and 105 legal entities on Kiev’s sanctions list unveiled on Wednesday. The list also includes politicians, culture figures and others who acted as observers at the referendum in Crimea and the elections in the territories in eastern Ukraine uncontrolled by Kiev.

“We are dismayed by President Poroshenko’s actions, including a ban on dozens of international media covering Ukraine,” CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said, according to the organization’s website.

The 34 journalists and seven bloggers on Ukraine’s list come from Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, the CPJ says.

Poroshenko has also banned three BBC journalists including a Moscow correspondent. Andrew Roy, the BBC’s foreign editor, has dismissed the measure as “a shameful attack on media freedom.”

The Russian journalists on the blacklist work for the news agencies TASS, RIA Novosti and RUPTLY, the Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, the NTV and Channel One TV channels. Rossiya Segodnya Director General Dmitry Kiselev is also on the list.